Welcome to Medical News Today

Healthline Media, Inc. would like to process and share personal data (e.g., mobile ad id) and data about your use of our site (e.g., content interests) with our third party partners (see a current list) using cookies and similar automatic collection tools in order to a) personalize content and/or offers on our site or other sites, b) communicate with you upon request, and/or c) for additional reasons upon notice and, when applicable, with your consent.

Healthline Media, Inc. is based in and operates this site from the United States. Any data you provide will be primarily stored and processed in the United States, pursuant to the laws of the United States, which may provide lesser privacy protections than European Economic Area countries.

By clicking “accept” below, you acknowledge and grant your consent for these activities unless and until you withdraw your consent using our rights request form. Learn more in our Privacy Policy.

Please accept our privacy terms

We use cookies and similar technologies to improve your browsing experience, personalize content and offers, show targeted ads, analyze traffic, and better understand you. We may share your information with third-party partners for marketing purposes. To learn more and make choices about data use, visit our Advertising Policy and Privacy Policy. By clicking “Accept and Continue” below, (1) you consent to these activities unless and until you withdraw your consent using our rights request form, and (2) you consent to allow your data to be transferred, processed, and stored in the United States.

Register for a free account

Ancient hominid 'hanky panky' also influenced spread of STIs

Published
Wednesday 19 October 2016 Published Wed 19 Oct 2016

Adapted Media Release

With recent studies proving that almost everyone has a little bit of Neanderthal DNA in them - up to 5 percent of the human genome - it's become clear our ancestors not only had some serious hominid 'hanky panky' going on, but with it, a potential downside: the spread of sexually transmitted infections, or STIs.

For wherever life goes, germs are soon to follow.

In the case of the most common STI, human papillomaviruses (HPVs), almost everyone hosts a number of infections, with strain HPV16 responsible for most cervical and oral cancers.
By reconstructing the ancestry and timing of the family tree of HPV16 in greater detail than ever before, and by comparing the evolutionary histories of viruses and humans, a new pattern has emerged. Now, researchers have generated - only to be repopulated at a much later date through their contact by Neanderthals, challenging the assumption that HPV16 co-evolved with modern humans. The study, by Ville Pimenoff at the Catalan Institute of Oncology and Ignacio Bravo at the French National Center for Scientific Research was published in the advanced online edition of Molecular Biology and Evolution.

During the evolution of HPV16, variants A and B/C/D co-diverged with archaic and modern humans, respectively. When populations of modern humans left Africa and had sexual intercourse with Neanderthals and Denisovans, they were infected by the viral variant that had evolved with archaic humans, and this virus thrived and expanded among modern humans

This scenario finally explains unsolved questions: why human diversity is largest in Africa, while HPV16 diversity is largest in East-Asia, and why the HPV16A variant is virtually absent in Sub-Saharan Africa while it is by far the most common one in the rest world.

"Oncogenic viruses are very ancient," said Ignacio Bravo. "The history of humans is also the history of the viruses we carry and we inherit. Our work suggests that some aggressive oncogenic viruses were transmitted by sexual contact from archaic to modern humans."

They propose that interactions between the host and viral genomes may explain why most humans are exposed to HPVs and cure the infection, while in a few unfortunate cases the infection persists and can lead to cancer. The different degree of archaic ancestry in our genomes could be partly responsible for differential susceptibility to cancer. Since HPVs do not infect bones, current Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes do not contain HPVs. As a next step, the authors hope to trace HPVs sequences in ancient human skin remains as a more direct test of their hypothesis.

2019 Healthline Media UK Ltd. All rights reserved. MNT is the registered trade mark of Healthline Media. Any medical information published on this website is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a healthcare professional.